Hearts in Atlantis

There are two distinct dimensions to Stephen King's writing. On the one hand he is most widely known as the horror meister who can churn out novels quicker than most of us can go through toilet paper. Then there is the King who knows when to leave the schlock behind and tell a good, character driven, yarn.

This is the King who penned Hearts in Atlantis, along with similar captivating stories turned into film such as Stand By Me, The Shawshank Redemption and The Green Mile.

Told in flashback, it is the story of a young boy who is mentored by a psychically gifted border (Hopkins) with a shadowy past who is renting the upstairs room in his mother's house. He instructs the boy to be on the lookout for the "low men" who are persuing him. It tells the story of lives and loves lost in the fleeting wonder of youth. Filled with metaphor, this is a gem of a film. View it for the acting. View it for the cinematography. View it for the art direction. View it for the directing. But most of all, view it for the wonderful story that it is. It will captivate you and leave you wishing it would go on forever.

To many, Stephan King is a well of horror, Lovecraftian chill that creeps upon us in the dead of night. So when his fantasy of insight comes along, they are struck blind, disappointed, let down by the mildness of the tale.

Director Hicks, screenplay writer Goldman, and the superlative team of Mr. Hopkins and young Yelchin have brought alive this artist's touch of Mr. King, in a finely crafted, sensitive film that just departs from the four walls of our mundane reality. In many subtle touches throughout the film, we -- even those of us Constant Readers who would read Mr. King's laundry list if he published it -- are guided through Goldman's skillful adaptation of the original novel.

Better than the book? Worse? No, this humble viewer will just say that the film can stand on its own, if we are just willing to let our eyes be opened to what can be.

Sure to be one of the best-loved films of this fall, "Hearts in Atlantis" adapted from Stephen King's best seller mines a lot of familiar territory from "Stand by Me," but that beloved film is a good model. In "Stand by Me," it was a writer reflecting back on the childhood summer "when we found the body," here it's David Morse as a photographer remembering the summer of his eleventh year "when Ted the boarder moved upstairs." Downplaying King's supernatural elements, this film slowly, but surely, builds to an emotional payoff every bit as moving as the end of Rob Reiner's gem.

This is a small, gentle film with lots of character development and period atmosphere. The tech credits such as production design and cinematography are superb and bring to life a time--1960--which, for some of us, was not that long ago. The child-actors are perfectly cast, and Anthony Hopkins as the mysterious stranger gives one of his best, most-heartfelt performances. (This guy could read USA Today weather forecasts aloud and make them sound like Shakespeare.) While others may have taken a radically different approach to the material, emphasizing action and suspense, I think screenwriter William ("Misery") Goldman and director Scott ("Shine," "Snow Falling on Cedars") Hicks ultimately hit the right notes. I will interested in seeing if this decidedly low-key approach strikes a box office chord with moviegoers frazzled by the big, dumb summer action films. If there's any fairness left in the world it will. It's that good.

Hearts in Atlantis is another Stephen King adaptation I wasn't aware of, it stars Anthony Hopkins, David Morse, and the taken before his time Anton Yelchin.

It tells the story of a small bullied boy, his father has passed away and his mother isn't fullfilling her duties as a parent. When a mysterious man appears in his life everything changes.

I had no idea what to expect but was quickly gripped, it was standard King stuff from small town America to flashbacks of youth to that wonderful charm they all seem to have.

The movie immediatly whispers sweet promises in your ear, you know something is coming and you'll expect it to be big! Sadly it doesn't entirely deliver, in fact I found the big "Revelation" very underwhelming. Don't get me wrong it was okay but not on the level I had expected.

Hearts in Atlantis is a beautiful quaint little tale, but is not one of those big epic life changing experiences that occasionally cross our paths.

The Good:

Cast are on point

Looks and sounds wonderful

Very charming

The Bad:

The twist is very weak

Feels like it should have been better

Things I Learnt From This Movie:

Anthony Hopkins simply can do no wrong can he?

One of the many acting skills Anthony Hopkins possesses is the ability to attract and disturb at the same time; he can charm you to no end with sly smiles and unspoken allure. But all the while he's hiding something unsettling that you can't ever quite figure out. In Hearts in Atlantis, the latest of what by now must be a truly massive box set of Stephen King film adaptations, Sir Anthony finds a writer perfectly suited to these unique talents. What we see is a movie eerie and enchanting, both in mood and in style -- a story that holds onto its cards throughout, letting you see each of them slowly, one by one, and only when absolutely necessary. In the end we find we have been held captive by a stunningly memorable and powerful film.

The story begins as a retrospective: Robert Morse plays the older version of Bobby Garfield, the central character of this reminiscent story. It takes a recent tragedy to send the older Bobby unwittingly in the mind to his days as an 11-year-old in 1960. There we go to a place common to almost all of King's stories: rural New England, where Bobby lives with his mother (Hope Davis), and spends his innocent, aimless days with his two friends Sully (Will Rothhaar) and Carol (Mika Boorem). His father died when Bobby was only five, and his mother is so busy hopefully tending to a real estate career that she has little time to tend to her only child. To this point nothing is out of the ordinary; this childhood is deliberately portrayed with hazy, warm undertones, akin to the sense of youth so familiar to many who look back upon it.

Fairly early on we meet Ted Brautigan (Hopkins), a boarder who shows up quite suddenly on their porch, his belongings in grocery bags. He is clean, well-spoken, unobtrusive and generally a placid sort. But he is also an instant enigma: he is of unknown origin, means, and intent, and Bobby's mother quickly decides this is a man to be viewed with caution. Bobby, on the other hand, innocently curious --and most likely desperate for anything that could spell the boredom of his uneventful summer-- decides this a man worth knowing. They become close, Brautigan dispersing kennels of wisdom and even offering young Bobby a dollar a week and cold root beers to read him the newspaper daily. But Brautigan clearly has a special quality about him: he can sense things and see things that are not readily apparent to most others. Bobby seems to have this gift as well, though in a lees pronounced way, and through this they form a bond, one Bobby's mother slowly and begrudgingly affords him. She's suspicious of this man still, while we the viewers begin gradually to glean some of the mysteries of his past. I don't dare say what they are, but they do involve "the Low Men", people, Brautigan warns Bobby, who may some day come looking for him. He tells Bobby what signs to look for about town, gently using the boy as a scout of imminent danger. Bobby does not know who they are or what they represent. Neither do we, for a long time, but the key instrument of this story is to make it intentionally vague. We are not to be concerned about these details, but rather to know that Brautigan has experienced them, and will do whatever he can to shield Bobby and his youth from the corrupting darkness looming behind them.

Stephen King has been widely read as an author of horror and suspense, but his best works --like this one-- work on a much more insidious level, evoking a sense of foreboding and unknown that manages to inform everything that happens within. The makers of this film find great success emphasizing the shady murkiness of the story, and they still manage to keep things centered. The mysteries of Ted Brautigan find parallels in the wonders of youth: Bobby experiences his first kiss, naturally, encounters a menacing bully, and learns to view his mother in evolving ways...grown-up ways. This is really a story of innocence and maturity, of youth's purity and the dangers that lurk at its end. Bobby finds that end to a certain degree, but along the way finds friendship, knowledge, and a sense of the mysteries of adulthood that await him. Ted Brautigan is really more than a friend to Bobby; he is a guide, a protector, and a teacher. These two actors provide real, natural on screen chemistry in this film, and there is one delightful scene early on where Brautigan intensely relives for Bobby a glory day of Chicago Bears football lore. This is an actor who can take any available strengths of writing and magnify them for us viewers who watch him say them aloud. As a result Anthony Hopkins anchors this infectious little film to the ground while still allowing it to soar skyward when needed.